Stopping the Casino Narcotic

"Perhaps the more interesting question is why I stopped gambling. At one level, the answer is easy: I got bored. But that's too easy. Looking back, I think that it took me years to finally see that while pro blackjack possesses all the trappings of work -- calculation, investment of time, skill, profit -- it isn't work, only its simulacrum, just as gambling is merely a simulacrum of play. This was the lesson that really hit home. It told me that in order to have the very thing that my father didn't -- will, in the world -- I needed to give up the pretence of work and grow up, and then find something genuinely consequential to do with my life."